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Undaunted.Life: A Man's Podcast by Kyle Thompson

THOM RAINER | Crucial Commitments to Church (Ep. 887)

Undaunted.Life: A Man's Podcast by Kyle Thompson

Undaunted.Life: A Man's Podcast by Kyle Thompson

Religion & Spirituality

4.81.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we welcome Thom Rainer back to the show. He is an author, church consultant, and former pastor. He is also theFounder and CEO of Church Answers which is an online community and resource for church leaders. Prior to founding Church Answers, Rainer served as president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. He has written three #1 bestselling books: I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, and Simple Church. In this interview, we discuss his new book “Crucial Commitments: 5 Simple Decisions That Members of Healthy and Growing Churches Make”, the church trends he has seen since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, what happens when people look for “perfect churches”, the problem with individuals looking for churches or pastors to “feed them”, why churches without actual membership suffer, what families teach their children when they prioritize travel sports over church involvement, why churches capitulate to the culture, the role of radical prayer in the health of a congregation, why individual Christians should not avoid evangelism, and much more. Let’s get into it… Episode notes and links HERE. Donate to support our mission of equipping men to push back darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat,

0:05.4

and we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset.

0:10.8

This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back.

0:16.4

So for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges

0:23.4

that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.combe, www.org, slash 31 days to download

0:30.7

this resource for free. That's undaunted.combe, life slash 31 days. your reset today this is on This is Undaunted Life a Man's podcast.

1:01.0

I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

1:02.6

Let's get into it.

1:03.7

Tom Rainer, I'm not even going to do my normal intro or outro where I let everybody

1:07.0

know who you are because this is your third appearance on the show.

1:09.7

Everybody knows.

1:10.6

And everybody's thinking hockey right now because we're living in a time period. We're the United States of America. We are the gold medal winners. We own the Canadians, okay? That's their only sport. It's like our fifth favorite sport, and yet we are the gold medalist. So we're thinking we're thinking hat tricks right now. This is your hat trick performance. Are you excited? Because I am. I am excited. And I guess it's hat trick for the hockey team because women's one goal, men one goal, and there's something else on the horizon to win go. But hey, I'm not going to weigh too heavily on our Canadian audience. That is our second best country of the show and all that. And we understand, but guys, guess what? You still have Mounties and maple syrup and a lot of snow. So it's not like you got nothing out of this deal. You just don't have a gold medal. You got that cute little second place metal. Look at you guys. Good for you. Oh, you're terrible. I'm trying my best. I'm trying my absolute best. They live in a communist hellhole up there,

2:01.0

so I'm just trying to make them feel as good as possible about their decision making. I've got friends in Alberta, and they have similar sentiments. Well, hey, when we get emails from people, it is funny. The Canadians will let me know. They're like, Kyle, you know we're not all like that. I'm like, yeah, but it's way more fun to be pejorative, right? That's like it's way more fun

2:18.2

to just assume y'all are all the exact same kind of person.

2:20.9

But we love our Canadians, don't we, Tom? We love them all. As much as is possible to love a Canadian. It's like loving a stepchild. It's like you kind of love them, but not really. I'm kidding, guys. I'm kidding. I think all of us are stepchildren

2:32.1

or somewhere or another.

2:32.8

But yes, this is your third appearance on the show.

2:34.6

And the reason is,

2:35.9

is because you just won't stop writing books, Tom. Every single year, I'm getting an email saying, hey, here's another book, here's another book. How do you do it? How do you keep writing stuff? How do you keep having stuff to say? Well, first of all, I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. I'll tell you that. And that is not a self-facing comment. That is a reality. What I am able to do is I have connection with about a quarter of a million churches. Now, that's a big number, but in terms of churches that contact our organization, churches that want information, and we do consultations, and we listen and we coach. Here coach here's the bottom line Kyle I'm listening to

3:08.7

the churches and the churches are giving me the material I'm listening to leaders and they're

3:14.0

giving me the material I am not this writing machine in the sense of I'm always coming up with

3:19.6

ideas I'm getting ideas and in some senses I'm stealing them because they weren't originally mine, but I amalgamated them together. And one book after another comes because God's doing some great working churches. There are messed up churches, but God is doing some great work in churches. And I'm able to be the reporter, if you will, for that. So you can't give me any credit. I mean, I don't even know how many books I've

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